and the bell tolled
by Akishira
Summary: You’re not sure when it happens; he becomes one of the people you want to protect, and for him you will find yourself challenging the world. But there's not enough time; there never is.


_:..and then the bell tolled..:_

Series: Fullmetal Alchemist  
Character: Maes Hughes  
Prompt: "Time will tell."

You know what you're signing up for, when you scrawl your signature (the sign of a man half grown, a sigil of the boy you are, a scribble that will change every time you redefine yourself) across the dotted line (spilling across the line and over it, but then you never did have much regard for regulations).

You know what it's like, even before you're posted out onto the front lines, because you grew up close to the border; your skin is pale and your hair and eyes as dark as ink, but somewhere in you runs blood as thick and wild as that of the brown-skinned desert people who laughingly danced in the border town fairs and traded beautiful woven and beaded shawls for animal pelts and books and water. Somewhere in you something screams of the injustice, of the tyranny of the uniform you wear, the drumming of bullets like deadly raindrops upon a people who did nothing more to deserve the invasion of their desert land than to raise an embargo for religious reasons.

You know what it is that you fight for, and that it has nothing to do with the ideology of the force that conscripted you, and that is enough to assuage the guilt (because your family has never disagreed with you except where it matters, and here it mattered very much indeed, but it is too late now).

You walk into this trap willingly, eyes wide open and arms spread in welcome, because you already know who will win this pointless war, and you know that the true victors of war are the ones who are left with the most in the end.

You have people that you need to protect. And for them to live-

Amestris must win this war quickly.

--

You aren't quite sure when he was added to the small group of people you decided that you wanted to protect.

He's not really a likeable kind of guy, by your standards; he's quiet, taciturn, blows up things by snapping his fingers at them, and (perhaps the worst of all) carries with him the perpetual stink of poorly done barbeque, fire condensed into a single intense flash of sooty glory that sears the skin but leaves the insides intact (they die not of fire but of fluid loss and wrenching pain, bleeding clear fluid from cracks in blackened crispy skin as they thrash and shriek and trail off by agonizing inches and you hate cleanup duty because that smell stays on your skin long after you've wiped your knives clean and hoped that you hadn't fudged the mercy stroke on any of those piteous shells).

You have no idea why you pour him a drink on that night- alcohol makes your recollection fuzzy. Maybe, you muse later, he looks sad instead of stern. Depressed instead of grumpy. But you share drinks, and somewhere along the line you doze off on the same couch, not drunk enough to forget everything, or totally shame yourselves in foolishness and vomit, but drunk enough to be companionable.

And that changes something.

You're not quite sure what (and it is hard to be sure of anything in the morning, with the smell of stale beer hanging over the room like bad perfume and a gun in your hand as the sentries peal the alarm bells- he's already gone, the trailing white-gloved hand vanishing round the corner of the open doorframe like a retreating parley).

You're not sure when it happens; he becomes one of the people you want to protect, and for him you will find yourself challenging the world. Everything you believed in, from the order of the universe to the people you really wanted to protect- and the best ways to protect them.

But for now you are simply sort of puzzled-confused-annoyed, as if the sweater you bought turned out to be itchy-scratchy-irritating, and there is no time to think about _why_.

And then it all changes.

You're still not quite sure why.

Or when.

Or how.

Only that it is.

Has.

Will.

--

You're not quite sure where the years went, but people are right when they say it never seems like enough at the end (not that you've ever taken them to heart, because you always thought you'd have enough time to do what you wanted to). But it's time for your curtain call, and you're running running running away just like you've run run run away before, and you know it's not going to be enough this time.

It's really time for you to go; all that's left is delaying the inevitable as much as you can, to help that sullen guy from your memories (such a long, long time ago and so very fresh in your memory now as you run-stumble-jerk along, half in a world of burned flesh and smoky barracks and brittle, bloodshot eyes and half in a world of uneven pavement and industrial haze and electric lights that begin to flicker uncertainly to life as afternoon passes into evening and you feel your time running out with the retreating daylight). Only it's not enough, it's still not enough, and you know it's not enough even as you try desperately to hope it will be.

It's not.

It's over in that blindingly short moment, of awful realization and white pain and gunpowder stench (for a heartbeat it's the warzones all over again, friends who aren't friends and enemies who seem all too un-enemylike and everything is dizzy for that crucial moment) and you bruise your shoulder on the telephone as the force of the shot sends you reeling back, but that's a small, insignificant part of your pain now. More important is the hole in your chest, the choking in your throat, the whys and hows and _are they going to be alright, oh Gracia Gracia forgive me, Alicia I love you, damnit Mustang you're such a bitch to take care of, you know?_ and it's all too much, too fast, too slow, life is racing away from you and you can't remember if it's worth it anymore.

All that's left is hope, as you lie there and wait for forever to come.

There's not enough time.

There never is.


End file.
